Knowledge Base Article

How to check your mailbox size

All email accounts have a prescribed size limit of 10MB. If your mailbox gets bigger than 10MB, you will not be able to sent email messages. You will receive an email message from the "System Administrator" when the mailbox size gets over the limit. The best way to check the current size of your mailbox is by using MS Outlook. If you don't have MS Outlook on your computer, you can log on a computer in one of the computer labs.

There are two ways to check your mailbox size on MS Outlook. The first, and recommended way, is to go to "Mailbox Cleanup" (located under the Tools menu). To see the size in Outlook 2003, you need to click on the "View Mailbox Size" button. In Outlook 2002 (XP), you need to click on the "Click Here" button. The "Mailbox Cleanup" gives access to other useful features like auto archiving, emptying the Deleted Items and others.

The second way to check the size of your mailbox (or any folder inside your mailbox) is the following. In the folder list (on the left side of the application), right-click on the top of the tree-like hierarchy. This entry will have one of the following formats: "Mailbox - Lastname, Firstname", "Lastname, Firstname", "Outlook Today - [...]". If the folder list is not visible, go to the View menu and select "Folder List."

Select "Properties for Mailbox..."

Click on the "Folder Size" button.

If the "Total Size" field shows a number greater than 10240KB, then your mailbox is most likely over the limit. Scroll through the list of folders located under "Total Size" and identify the ones that take the most space. Go to those folders and find the messages with big attachements. A good way to spot big messages is to sort them by size.